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eLending for Libraries

IFLA, ebooks and Access to Digital Content

Libraries have been providing access to digital content to their users for over two decades. Until recently this content largely comprised access to aggregated databases of journals, newspapers, popular magazines and technical and specialized monographs. However, the recent explosion in availability and popularity of eReaders and tablets, along with a corresponding increase in the availability of commercial eBooks, has seen a growing demand for downloadable eBooks in public libraries.

This scenario offers libraries many opportunities. The availability of digital content, downloadable onsite at the library or remotely through online catalogues has the potential to develop a digital culture of reading that will benefit users, authors and publishers. However, the current situation facing libraries is anything but positive. There are presently many difficulties, as downloadable eBooks raise a variety of technical, legal and strategic issues which are leading to concern, confusion and frustration for libraries and their users, publishers and authors.

Libraries play a crucial role in bringing people to reading. From children’s books to the latest thrillers, they are the safety value in the copyright system that prevents access to culture being the preserve of the better off. But eLending has been surrounded by legal uncertainty for many years. Today, European judges decided that eBooks could indeed be treated as books, but further analysis of the decision will be necessary to understand its implications and limits.

With eBooks becoming an ever more normal way of reading, it is high time that the law caught up with reality. IFLA therefore welcomes the Opinion of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union on eLending.